Thursday, 23 April 2015

Confessions of a Writing Addict

I'm obsessive. Very, very obsessive. It's just the way I'm wired. If you've read this blog for a while, you'll probably recall other instances where I've admitted to this flaw in my personality. Maybe it isn't always a flaw, but still.

Just the other day, I told you that my new novel is done. I wrote the whole thing in seven weeks, and that includes a complete revamp of the plotline and a mini write-over when I'd gotten to chapter 17 (which is just short of halfway through). Even if you add the actual planning stage of the novel, it puts me at just over three months. Sure, the idea for the novel came to me even while I was writing The Queen's Fury, but I only started my research and plotline drafting in February.

You would think that the sight of a keyboard would send shivers of repulsion down my spine at the moment, wouldn't you? I mean, honestly.

In the past I took off at least two months after finishing a novel. I gave myself a break to think it all through, you know. Work out if the stuff I wrote made sense and kind of plot out the basics of the next novel in my mind, while I played Dragon Age for hours on end. Just so I would have a loose idea of where I wanted to go next. Sure, with my other novels I spent a lot more time actually writing them. I started on TQF in January 2014 and finished middle November of the same year. And that's actually pretty good for writing a whole novel.

The thing is, I've never been quite as inspired to write as I was this time around. It's insane, I tell you. I literally COULD NOT SLEEP during the writing phase. I may have mentioned that here sometime, though I can't remember. The ideas kept me up at night and I was seriously exhausted by chapter twenty, but I just couldn't stop. No matter how tired I was, I felt almost guilty for not writing in my every waking moment. Obsessive, I told you. I was in front of this keyboard until late nights and sometimes during early mornings too. Whenever Kayla was asleep, I was writing. (I have no idea how Jan puts up with me...)

With my other novels, I got this way too at times. Sometimes I went without food if I could rather be writing. Haha! But with the other novels, the inspiration always died down at some point. I'd push out about five chapters and then the insane inspiration was gone and I could function normally again.

Unfortunately for my sanity, that didn't happen with the new novel. I felt this adrenaline rush of inspiration from the day I started to the day I finished it.

This is probably the main reason why I was certain I would be able to rest a little once it was completed. Like an idiot. The whole time, my reasoning was that the inspiration would have to go away once the novel was done. Right? RIGHT?

I was wrong.

I completed The Physician's Apprentice (congratulations, you just learned the title of the new one! whoop whoop!) in record time and I still can't sleep, because there are too many ideas and plot lines in my head. I dream the scenes that need to happen next. I can't get this project off of my mind. I've been trying to occupy myself with other stuff, but it hasn't been working and that kind of scares me.

The point of this all is that I've had a break of two weeks and I'm writing again. Judge me if you want to. Call me crazy and addicted if you need to (you'd be right anyway), but I'm writing again. I've been at it for only a day and I've already got over twenty pages.